Bharti Airtel completes landing of SEA-ME-WE 6 submarine cable in Chennai
The company had earlier landed the SEA-ME-WE 6 cable in Mumbai on December 30, 2024. “The cable landing, both in Mumbai and Chennai, will be fully integrated with Airtel's data centre arm, Nxtra by Airtel, at its large facilities in the respective cities with an aim to enable global hyperscalers and businesses in the country to seamlessly access international connectivity and data centre services,” the company said
New Delhi: Telecom major Bharti Airtel on Monday completed the landing of the Southeast Asia-Middle East-West Europe-6 (SEA-ME-WE 6) submarine cable in Chennai, following its earlier landing in Mumbai last December. The 21,700 route kilometre (Rkm) submarine cable will connect India to Singapore and France (Marseille) crossing Egypt, enhancing India’s connectivity to the world.
However, SEA-ME-WE-6 is expected to bring a whopping global capacity of India of 220 terabit per second or TBPs, which is a unit of measurement for data transfer speed. “These cable landings were completed by SubCom, a leading supplier of subsea fibre optic cable data systems responsible for the engineering, manufacture and installation of SEA-ME-WE-6,” Bharti Airtel said in a release.
The company had earlier landed the SEA-ME-WE 6 cable in Mumbai on December 30, 2024. “The cable landing, both in Mumbai and Chennai, will be fully integrated with Airtel's data centre arm, Nxtra by Airtel, at its large facilities in the respective cities with an aim to enable global hyperscalers and businesses in the country to seamlessly access international connectivity and data centre services,” the company said.
“The 21,700 Rkm submarine cable system connects India to Singapore and France (Marseille) crossing Egypt through terrestrial cables. With this, Airtel has further enhanced its network presence with diversified capacity in the submarine cable system, globally,” it added.
Commenting on the development, Sharat Sinha, director & CEO, Airtel Business, said this new investment and milestone would further improve the company's secure, diverse and scalable global network. “We are delighted to further strengthen our global connectivity by landing one of the largest cable systems into our facilities. This complements our existing network strength of 400,000 Rkms across 50 countries,” Sinha said.
Airtel's global network spans five continents. The company has investments in 34 cables globally with some of the recent ones, including 2Africa, Southeast Asia-Japan Cable 2 (SJC2) and Equiano. “The move underlines Bharti Airtel’s commitment to address digital India's growing demand for global connectivity and data with additional routes, diversity and capacity,” Sinha said.
As a key member of the consortium of the SEA-ME-WE-6 cable system, Airtel has invested in the core cable and has additionally co-built a private network of four Fiber Pairs between Singapore, Chennai and Mumbai. This cable system will bring a whopping 220 TBPs of global capacity to India.
Apart from these cables that connect India to key regions like Asia Pacific, Europe, the Middle East and US, Airtel's global subsea network investments also include large cable systems like i2i Cable Network (i2icn), Europe India Gateway (EIG), IMEWE, SEA-ME-WE-4, AAG, Unity, EASSy, Gulf Bridge International (GBI) and Middle East North Africa Submarine Cable (MENA Cable) among others.
Singapore Telecommunications Limited (SingTel), a leading communications group, is planning to sell its stake in Bharti Airtel through a block deal and the estimated value of this transaction is learnt to be Rs 8,500 crore, according to the sources.
SingTel offers services such as mobile, broadband, and TV across Asia, Australia, and Africa. In the December 2024 quarter, Bharti Airtel’s promoters reduced their stake from 53.14 per cent to 53.11 per cent, while mutual funds increased their holdings from 10.71 per cent to 11.37 per cent.
However, the sources said that the SingTel’s board is expected to meet this week to discuss the proposed stake sale, which is part of its capital management strategy, while there was no official statement issued by the company yet. Before the proposed sale, SingTel held approximately 30 per cent in Bharti Airtel.
